Climbing back into the card show saddle

Up until two weekends ago I hadn't been to a card show since February, that's seven months for those of you playing along at home. I realize that for some of the folks reading this that might not seem like a long time, especially for those of you who aren't fortunate enough to have any card shows in your area, but for me it is a long time, or at least it is since I got back into card collecting.

Before this stretch, the longest I had gone in the last 8 or 9 (or 10) years, was five or six months, and that occurred just last year. It's no coincidence that these "long" stretches have come so close  together, as my interest in cards has begun to wane a bit, well, actually wane might not be the right word, let's just say that card collecting hasn't been as important to me in recent months as it had been in the last few years.

I can tell you that this past summer (April through last week), other than blog about cards, and trying to keep up with everyone else's blogs, I've hardly done anything with actual cards in months. I started a sorting project sometime earlier this year, and haven't gotten back to since the weather started getting really nice. I tend to spend a lot of time outside doing things, rain or shine, but this past summer I really outdid myself, in terms of work and play. I've been trying to venture outside of my comfort zone a bit, which sometimes leads me to places that I technically shouldn't be, but oh well, I'm not getting any younger, and there's still plenty of things that I'd like to do while I can.

I've spent a lot more time exploring local areas (forgotten areas?) this past summer as well, which combined with some of the things that I've found while doing so, has made me become a lot more interested in the local history -- something that I hadn't been interested in though my first couple of years living here. I'll probably do a post or two on this at some point, which I think a few of you might be interested in, especially some of the old baseball stuff.

But it hasn't been all fun and games though, there's been plenty of sweaty backbreaking work to be done as well (even mucked up my back a few months ago), not that I really mind, as it certainly provides for good exercise... and there's no such thing as getting too much exercise!

So anyways, cards! As mentioned, the last show that I went to was back in February, one of the big super mega 190-table affairs. If hadn't been one of those, I probably wouldn't have made the trip. Two weekends ago was another one of the giant shows, and even though I wasn't overly excited about the prospect of doing so much driving, these shows only occur twice a year, so I felt sort of compelled to go -- if it hadn't been one of the big shows, I most certainly wouldn't have went.

I said that I wasn't looking forward to the drive, which is true, but I've also been skipping the monthly shows because I didn't feel like getting up crazy early, only to then put in a long drive. But the day of reckoning arrived, and I was up at 3am (woke up at 2), left at 4:30, and got to the show at about 6:15. About 1/3 of the 100+ dealers were either already set up, or still setting up when I arrived, and didn't take long for the other 2/3 to show up and get their wares set up. And of course there were already plenty of patrons in attendance, some of whom had already been there for almost an hour.

I spent about four hours at the show, and realized later that I only bought stuff from four different dealers, so much for spreading the wealth, huh? Had the weather not been so nice that day, I probably would've stayed longer, but it was in the mid to upper 90's, and I really did want to try and get home as early as possible, because OUTDOORS!

As per usual, I'll be spreading out my purchases across multiple posts, but not all in a row though, as I do have a few non-card posts in the works.

First up will be the stuff I got from Jim, who dare I say, is the most popular dealer at the Nashville shows. And for good reason as well, his prices, and the stuff that he has access to is beyond equal. Believe it or not, there are people that go to these shows who will only buy from him, which seems a little weird, but it's not my place to say anything, so...

Jim was still setting up when I got there, but was already being swarmed by deal seekers. I've seen it many times before, but I'm always amazed by the deals that are being made even before everything is set up. I mean people will be dropping hundreds of dollars, and he's only put out three boxes. His "sick hitz" boxes are really popular, and tend to be decimated within a few minutes of being put on the table. O of course am waiting for his bargain boxes, which he is equally well known for, although this time I was a little dismayed to see that were only two 3200 ct boxes of 5/$1 stuff, two 3200 ct dime boxes, and two 3200 ct 2/$1 boxes -- everything else was vintage, high end, and high end vintage.

I could tell right away that the dime boxes weren't going to be very good, so I quickly switched to the 5/$1 boxes, which is where everything that you'll see today came from. He must've recently bought somebody's prospecting collection, because there was an awful lot of rookies from the last few years in these boxes, which meant plenty of Bowman, and if you've ever come around here before, you probably already know that rookies aren't my thing, especially those of current players.

Baseball wise, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot there of interest to me, but I was still able to find a few things. There were about twenty copies of each of the Mantle cards, probably should've gotten a few more of the vertical one. I've already got one of the gold Helton's, but what's one more. Still haven't looked to see if I needed the Kaline or not. I don't like the newer Diamond Kings sets, but I didn't have the Ichiro, I think it's a parallel of some sort too. And twenty cents was probably too much to pay for an A&G Maris base card, but they're probably aren't too many cards from that set that I would want, and I was there, and it was there, so I grabbed it... very cool card BTW!

I hate to keep saying "normally" or "usually', but normally Jim's boxes are a wellspring of 90's inserts, especially those of the basketball and football variety, not this time though, Steve here was the ONLY 90's insert that I saw in those bargain boxes. And to my knowledge there wasn't any basketball period, new or old. Considering how much neat stuff that I've gotten from Jim over the last 4 1/2 years, I figure he's entitled to have an off show or two, and not finding a bunch of 90's inserts isn't the end of the world, besides, I did make up for it a little bit through two of the other dealers I bought from later in the day.

Did you know that Prizm Draft Picks was a thing? And did you know that this Prizm Draft Picks has mascot cards in it? Oh, and did you know that the LSU Tiger was called Mike? I knew none of these things! Obviously these are both parallels, pink shimmer and blue? Nice looking cards though. If there wasn't a 1/1 in play, I'd probably try and build a Duck rainbow, but since there is a 1/1 out there, I will instead be content to try find a few more cheap copies of the base and other parallels.

Picked up a few color matching (save for Andre Johnson) Prizms from the last few years too. The Woodhead is #'d to /75, so that's something, though I think I like the Alex Smith the most.

Jim's boxes may not have been the best for me this time, but I did find a number of things for other people, which was nice. I also grabbed this 1992 Topps Mike Bielecki blank front for whoever wants it, he's a Brave if that helps. I love me some blank backs, but blank fronts don't do much for me, so it's available if anyone wants it.

 

I must've made a happy noise of some sort when I came across these, because the guy next to me turned to see what I was holding, saw what it was, then rolled his eyes and went back to pulling out cards of prospects -- that's okay guy, you keep hoarding cards of little boys, and I'll keep grabbing cards of folks who've actually done things! By the by, this set was new to me, it's called Pieces of the Past, and was put out by a company called The Bar(?) back in 2017. The cards are really quite pretty in person, got a really nice texture too. I definitely wouldn't mind finding some more of these, provided their cheap of course.

Past greats on new cardboard, it doesn't get much better than that! Well, maybe past greats on old cardboard, but you what I mean. I tried to scan these multiple times, the scanner couldn't handle the Dickerson and Sayers, so instead you get a wonky photo.

SLU cards are not something that see here (or even back in Portland) very often, this probably the third or fourth that I've found in the last five years, because of this, and because it's Bart Starr, I had to get it.

I have multiple copies of this '84 Payton, but I don't mind owning another one. I grabbed the Jim Plunkett, because Jim Plunkett! It's from the 2017 Classics set, which I don't particularly care for, and it's one of those faux blank back parallels, which I really hate, but still... it's Jim Plunkett!

Who doesn't like cheap autographs of questionable authenticity? Although, for the record I did compare these to "authenticated" samples, and they do seem to match up. Plus who's gonna bother forging signatures of these guys, it's not like they're autos are going to be commanding top dollar or anything! I already had this same Craig Morton cards signed, I think I paid a quarter for it last year at a show, his prices must be going down, because this one was only twenty cents. Nick Fotiu had a pretty solid career, but I picked it up more for the neat card than the autograph. Apparently Tim Cheveldae was a Bruin at some point, so I guess I'll see if Marc wants him, if not, he'll be looking for a happy home elsewhere.

Even counting the stuff that wasn't shown, aka the stuff for everyone else, this was by far the least that I had ever purchased from Jim, but again, I picked up some neat cards elsewhere, so it all evened out in the end. I did mention too that he had some vintage stuff, but I was really only looking for a few specific guys this time, so other than one card for a friend, I didn't get any vintage from him either -- although I did get a few of those elsewhere as well.

For those interested, Friday's post will feature another portion of my purchases, and don't worry, it'll be considerably shorter in length :)


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Colossal card show recap: Part 3

Welcome back, for the third, and final installment of this recap series.

Seller #8:

The way the two gym system was set up, you had to enter through the smaller one, go across the small alley/car lane, and in to the larger gym. They blocked off the lane in between the gyms, so that the dealers who usually park there, couldn't. It worked out pretty well that way, at least people didn't have to try and squeeze between cars as they walked form gym to gym. I mention this because when I arrived  at around 7am, about half the dealers in the smaller gym hadn't set up yet, so I did a quick walk through of the ones that had, and made my way to the much fuller large gym.

After about two hours in the larger gym, I decided to make a trip out to the car so that I could unburden myself a little bit (especially the comics from the first post), so I had walk back through the smaller gym to do so. By now all the dealers had probably been set up in the smaller gym for at least an hour, so when I came back from the car, it was time to see what this gym had to offer.

Walking in, at the first row of tables directly in front of you, was an older guy who hadn't been there during my original pass through. The first thing I saw was a 3200 ct box marked "50 cents each or 3/$1". There was a guy just finishing up with said box, and after I saw some of the cards in his stack, my inner self started dropping four letter words for not getting here sooner.

The box was only about half full at this point, and as I saddled up to it, the seller informed me that it had been picked over pretty good so far (more internal swearing). The box was full, or rather half full, of nothing but 60's baseball and football. And everything was in either top loaders or those soft flexible holders (don't know the name), so most of the stuff was in fairly decent shape.

There was quite a bit of '65 and '66 Topps baseball, neither of which I'm collecting, so I didn't end up getting as much as I thought I would. And of the stuff I'm collecting, there were a lot of thing I already have. That being said, I still found 30 cards, including the 67's above.

If you look closely, you can see that four of the 63's here have wax stains on the front. Which doesn't bother me anymore, especially after I learned last year of the method using pantyhose to remove front of the card stains. Everything's still in boxes right now, so I don't know where my pantyhose are (that sounds weird), but once I find them, these will clean up nice.

These were the only three 64's in the box.

One lone '71 as well.

I think these '67 Topps football were the best, and most surprising thing to come from the box, as this is a set that is never found in discount boxes (at least not by me). I suspect that there had been more, but by the time I got there, there was only four left, so I ended up with a pair of Oilers...

... and a pair of Patriots. Even though I don't have a lot from it, this set is probably tied with the '69 Topps as my favorite vintage football set. And speaking of 1969...

... I found some of those too!

It's been a while since I've been able to cross any numbers off this checklist.

After finishing up with the discount box and paying, the seller, having seen what I bought, let me know that he had some better cards from some of the same sets in a two-row shoebox that was marked "$2 each or 3/$5". After looking through it, I came away with four cards that he let me have for $6:

Some more 64's. At #521, Tom Satriano is a needed high number. And Boog... well, he's just Boog.

Another wax stained card that will look amazing once it's removed, this Dave Giusti rookie is also a high number, at #509.

I'm always surprised that I don't see more 1969 Topps at these shows, as it's not like it's a hard set to come by, but for whatever reason, I just don't come across it very often. At least I was able to add this cool home run leaders though.

I'm not usually a very talkative person, but I really enjoyed talking to this particular vendor (so much so, that I apparently forgot his name already). Normally when someone asks me what I collect, knowing that they are just going to try pawn off some overpriced item in one of their cases, I will give a non-specific answer along the lines of "well, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that". But when this guy asked, you could tell he was genuinely interested, so I didn't mind giving him some specifics. He thought it was funny to hear how many sets I'm trying to work on. And I couldn't help but think, that this guy is like the grandpa that just about everyone ever, wishes they could have. I certainly hope our paths will cross again.

Seller #9:

This was my second to last stop, and I was just about done for the day. My social anxiety was starting to kick in, as even though the show had been going for at least four hours by now, it seemed like the amount of people showing up was growing exponentially. This was another dealer I hadn't seen before, from what I could gather, he owns a card shop in Kentucky. He had two tables (I believe) of mostly vintage baseball and football. In retrospect I should have spent more time at his tables, but again, I was really wanting to leave at this point. So, I basically stopped long enough to look through one of those floppy binders (I don't know what you call the non-rigid ones) that had 4 or 5 pages of '62 Post. It wasn't the greatest selection ever, but I did find this needed Don Zimmer for a dollar, so that was pretty neat.

Seller #10:

Even though I was past the point of needing to leave, I decided to make one more sweep through the larger gym, which turned out to be a pretty good idea. There is a husband/wife (I'm assuming) combo who only set up at the big shows, they usually have a couple tables of nothing but vintage. And when I vintage, I mean like, just about anything you can think of... they probably have it. Glass cases loaded with stacks (and stacks) of high end stuff, and shelving units behind them, that must have at least 50 thick binders of cards separated by set. It's really quite something, I'm to gather that they set up at The National every year, so I would imagine to well there, you would need this kind of inventory.

Even though I have seen them there four or five times now, this was actually the first time I had ever stopped at their tables. There are usually so many people going through their stuff, that I, not wanting to try and squeeze in, just keep on going. When I had gone by earlier, it was crowded, but now there was actually some open space for me to finally see what all the hype was about.

I can honestly say that at this point in the show, I was very much overwhelmed by their selection, I just couldn't take it all in. Realizing this fact, I decided that would just ask to see one of the binder's, try and find something I need, and leave. Because it was already the closest one to me, I went with the '62 Post football binder, and even that ended up being too much for my sleep deprived/anxiety riddled brain. Did you know that there are multiple background color variations for almost every card in that set? Well, I didn't, and that binder was chock full of all those variations. I got a couple of pages in, found the Bart Starr for $4, and figured that was enough for one day... or so I thought.

As I was paying, the guy asked me (I'm assuming because the Starr is in somewhat of an off condition) if I was interested in "scratch and dent" stuff. I know he didn't mean it, but the way he said it sounded kind of like an insult, I brushed it off though and said "depends on how bad they are". I was then directed to box the size of a literal shoebox, with a couple of small stacks of marked down cards.

Sitting right on top was this 1939 Play Ball of John "Black Jack" Wilson, who just so happened to be a fellow Portland native.

Even though it's a little rough, for $3, I had to have it. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that, other than being familiar with his name and that he was from Portland, I didn't know much about Jack Wilson. If anyone is interested, I found a really good article that the SABR.ORG people put together.

For two bucks apiece, I also ended up getting two 1950 Bowman's, which also happen to be my first cards from that set.

Both of these are pretty cool in their own way. The Earl Johnson, not only because of the PNW connection, but more importantly, because he was a celebrated WW2 veteran. As far as Al Papai goes, this was his one and only card, so it's always kind of neat to find those guys that only ever got one piece of cardboard.

At this point, there was another wave of people coming in, and it seemed to be getting very warm in there (it was 90 degrees outside) -- and the walls started feeling like they were closing in, so after paying, I made a beeline for the exit. I had spent four hours there, and in that kind of setting, with that many people, fours hours is just about my limit. Even though it started to get a bit rough towards the end, I'm still very glad that I went, as I was able pick up some really neat cards (and comics).

I know these past three posts have been pretty long(winded), so I really appreciate any of you out there, who actually took the time to read them all the way through.